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Liu Zaifu: Selected Critical Essays

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Liu Zaifu: Selected Critical Essays

Edited by

Howard Y. F. Choy Jianmei Liu

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Cover illustration: Alan Z. Huang’s painting, “A Scholar in the Bamboo Forest”. Depicted is a scholar who chose to forge his own path and discover the vivid aesthetic of the bamboo forest, an abstract space allow- ing free contemplation and creativity. Fleeing from the dogmatic factionalism of an outside world, here he is able to engage intellectually with the seven aesthetic spirits who embody various aspects of , , and Daoism.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010823

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Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com.

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Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Contents

Foreword: “Standing Alone atop the Mountain; Walking Freely under the Sea” vii David Der-wei Wang Acknowledgments xxi

Introduction 1 Liu Jianmei and Howard Y. F. Choy

part 1 Literary History

1 Literary History as Paradox 27 Translated by Howard Y. F. Choy

2 The End of Modern Chinese Revolutionary Literature 46 Translated by Steven Day

3 From the Monologic Era to the Polyphonic Era An Outline of Forty Years of Literary Development in Mainland China 93 Translated by Ke Wei and Torbjörn Lodén

part 2 Cultural Criticism and Literary Theory

4 Traditional Chinese Culture’s Designs on Humanity 119 Translated by Sabina Knight

5 On the Stylistic Revolution of Literary Criticism in the 1980s 134 Translated by Ann Huss

6 Farewell to the Contemporary Chinese Literary Theory’s Fin--siècle Struggle 169 Translated by Steven Day

7 Literature Exiling the State 185 Translated by Torbjörn Lodén

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access vi Contents

8 The Dimensions of Modern and Their Limitations 197 Translated by Eileen J. Cheng

part 3 Modern and Contemporary Chinese Writers

9 Lu Xun and Chinese/Foreign Culture 255 Translated by Alan Berkowitz and Haili Kong

10 Miracle and Tragedy in Modern Chinese Literature In Honor of Lu Xun’s 120th Birthday 270 Translated by Lianying Shan

11 Eileen Chang’s Fiction and C. T. Hsia’s A History of Modern Chinese Fiction 294 Translated by Yunzhong Shu

12 Escape of the Mental Prisoner In Honor of Gao Xingjian 328 Translated by Nicole Elizabeth Barnes

13 A Comparative Study of Gao Xingjian and Yan 338 Translated by Jessica Yeung

Postscript: Translation, Quotation, and Expatriation 350 Howard Y. F. Choy

Selected Bibliography 359 Index 367

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access foreword “Standing Alone atop the Mountain; Walking Freely under the Sea”

David Der-wei Wang 王德威

In the early morning of June 4, 1989, troops of the People’s Liberation Army stormed into ’anmen Square in Beijing. They opened fire on thousands of demonstrators who refused to vacate despite earlier warnings of a crackdown. Within a few hours, the troops had taken over the square, putting an end to the largest democracy movement in the history of the People’s Republic of China. What ensued was a massive manhunt for the activists rumored to be responsible for the movement. Among the targeted names was Liu Zaifu 劉再復 (1941–). Liu was the director of the Institute of Literature at the National Academy of Social Sciences, the leading literary institution of China, and one of the most influential critics in the “New Era” after the . His name was associated with national literary and cultural events and his works, such as “On Literary Subjectivity” (“Lun wenxue zhutixing” 論文學主體性) and A Treatise of Character Composition (Xingge zuhe lun 性格組合論) were best-sellers among a generation of Chinese youth yearning for intellectual inspiration. After the June 4 crackdown, Liu’s life took unexpected twists and turns. Upon hearing of his impeding arrest, Liu fled Beijing in extreme haste, first taking shelter in Guangzhou and then traveling to through a secret channel. In the following years, he exiled himself from Asia to Europe and North America, finally settling down in the United States. With his prominent profile in China, Liu could have led the expatriate community against the Chinese government, but he chose to lie low and concentrate on scholarship. In the ensuing three decades, he has produced dozens of books, articles, and essays, some of which, including Farewell to Revolution (Gaobie geming 告別 革命), have become instant classics. But in terms of personal engagement and reflective intensity, his forthcoming Five Autobiographical Accounts (Wu shi zizhuan 五史自傳) outstrips his other, prior work.1 In lieu of a foreword of the conventional kind, the following be a read- ing of Liu’s Five Autobiographical Accounts which I believe best serves the pur- pose of this volume. Liu’s autobiography offers a comprehensive coverage of

1 The title of this article and all quotations of Liu Zaifu are from his forthcoming book, Wu shi zizhuan, 5 vols. (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2017–).

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access viii foreword his career and thought at different stages, narrated in such a way as to induce not resonance but diacritical (self-)examination. Insofar as the volume aims to introduce a contemporary scholar best known for his dialogical inclination, my reading of Five Autobiographical Accounts represents not only a personal dialogue with Liu but also a prelude to the writings, repercussions indeed, of the volume in response to Liu’s “calls to arms” in post-socialist China.

Liu’s autobiography is composed of five volumes, each recounting his past from a unique angle—his writing career, his intellectual metamorphosis, his spiritual pilgrimage, his sociopolitical engagement, and above all, his mistakes and regrets over the years. The result is a composite narrative with multiple threads that complement and contradict one another. If conventional auto- biographical writing seeks to streamline its author’s into a coher- ent sequence, Liu has rendered a self-portrait in a critical dialogue not only with the world but also with himself—practicing his own theory of “character composition.” Liu’s autobiography also evokes multiple historical associations. The year 2019 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the June Fourth democracy move- ment as well as Liu’s self-exile, the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949), and most important, the centennial of the May Fourth Movement (1919). Juxtaposed against one another, these dates compel us to reflect on the high hopes and bitter outcomes, grand projects and failed expectations that informed China’s century-long pursuit of modernity. Most importantly, the autobiography also takes on a more subtle, literary dimension. In light of his immersion in the study of The (Hong lou meng 紅樓夢) in recent years, Liu may well have found in the twist of his own fate in 1989 an uncanny parallel to the drastic change of plot direction of the magnum opus, starting in chapter 80. Looking back at the popularity and prestige he enjoyed in academia throughout the 1980s, fol- lowed by years of trials overseas, he must have come to a very personal under- standing of the vanities and disillusions Stone undergoes in The Dream of the Red Chamber: having completed his own lesson in sentimental education, he is eager to seek what he calls the “second phase of his life” (di er shengming 第二生命).

1 Farewell to Revolution

Liu was born in a peasant family in southern . During his formative years, he witnessed China in transformation at every level. And as he describes, he experienced three grave losses in his life: the loss of his father in childhood,

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access foreword ix the loss of access to books during the Cultural Revolution, and the loss of his mother country after 1989. Liu vividly recalls how his mother struggled to hold the family together after the passing of his father, and how he worked to prove himself despite all adversities throughout his school years. He was a voracious reader wherever he was. After graduating from the Chinese depart- ment at , he was enlisted to join the editorial team of the Beijing-based magazine New Construction ( jianshe 新建設) in 1963—the first step of his career. Up to this point, Liu’s story reads like a socialist version of a bildungsroman: a native son from the Deep South defies the odds and makes it to the capi- tal, carrying great expectations for himself and his nation. But Beijing would teach him something more. When the Cultural Revolution broke out, Liu was at first excited by its calls to arms, but his enthusiasm quickly turned into dis- quiet. He was disturbed by the brutalities and cannibalistic mania permeating public persecutions, which reminded him of Lu Xun’s 魯迅 (1881–1936) story “Public Demonstration” (“Shizhong” 示衆); and he felt disoriented by the out- ing of Liu Shaoqi 劉少奇 (1898–1969) and other prominent figures as national traitors. When all that is solid melts into air, what is left is disillusionment and . Most devastating to Liu in this time of chaos, though, was the denial of access to books. Almost all books were banned to prevent their spreading evil thoughts, from to feudalism, and almost all familiar writers, from Shakespeare to Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 (1715–63), were labeled as reactionary, if not antirevolutionary. For someone like Liu who had been trained to read and think, the unavailability of books was “like a life without water or salt,” a deprivation so severe as to create “boundless fear.” He felt that “life has spoiled, begetting skepticism.” The end of the Cultural Revolution rekindled Liu’s hope. He joined the in 1979 and was quickly promoted to assist veteran literary leaders such as Zhou Yang 周揚 (1908–89) and Hu Qiaomu 胡喬木 (1912–92) with lecture scripts and manuscripts. He even won the attention of Hu Yaobang 胡耀邦 (1915–89), the emerging national leader known for open- ness. The 1980s saw China undergoing experimentation on all fronts, and one can imagine how Liu and like-minded fellow intellectuals aspired to change the status quo. His appointment as the director of the Institute of Literature at the National Academy of Social Sciences in 1985 signaled his ascendance to the top of academic leadership in China. This was also the time when the root- seeking and avant-garde movements arose to overhaul the literary mentality and ecology that had been dominated by socialist realism. Liu’s own works, such as “On Literary Subjectivity” and A Treatise of Character Composition, commanded enormous popularity for inquiring into the multifarious facets

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access x foreword of life as it is and subjectivity in contestation with the collective subjectivity. Liu’s thought inspired as much as provoked others as he became increasingly engaged in reforming his field. He questioned whether the between subjectivity and history can be reduced to formulism while trying to construe the intricate relationship between Party politics and revolutionary utopia- nism. Moreover, thanks to his personal interactions with veteran figures such as Zhou Yang, Hu Sheng 胡繩 (1918–2000), and Hu Qiaomu, he came to real- ize that all literary debates and attacks, however volatile and dogmatic, could not evade the quintessential question of what makes the human “human.” The complexity of human can never be underestimated; therefore, any pur- suit of a quick fix of humanity, particularly in the form of revolution, must be subject to close scrutiny. Amid the debris of the Cultural Revolution, it was reform rather than revolution that demanded serious commitment. He told Hu Yaobang that “a successful reform presupposes a vital public sphere and humanist environment, at the core of which is the ‘cultural mentality’ of the reformers.” Liu was pushing himself toward an unpredictable future. In 1986, Zehou 李澤厚 (1930–), the leading philosopher of the “New Era,” published “The Symbiotic Variations of ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘Saving the Nation.’” In this essay, Li argued that China’s search for modernity failed to achieve balanced development, with the demand of saving the nation—and the resultant revolution—overpowering that of enlightenment. In view of the devastation brought by the Cultural Revolution, Li urged the younger genera- tion to reassess the dilemma of enlightenment versus revolution as China was reaching another historical juncture. Li’s essay ignited heated debates nation- wide and understandably angered the authorities, whose legitimacy is rooted in the claim to continued revolution. He nevertheless found a kindred spirit in Liu; both believed that the “revolution” as promoted by the Party had become a monstrous, even antirevolutionary force, and both contended that instead of any radical measure aimed at an overhaul once and for all, what China needed most was enlightenment by means of cultural upbringing and intellectual cosmopolitanism. Both Liu and Li paid a high price for their ideas. Once this Pandora’s box was opened, no one could predict the outcome. When the democracy movement broke out on Tian’anmen Square in the spring of 1989, Liu and Li were cited by the demonstrators as spiritual mentors, though neither explicitly campaigned for any specific action. But the government thought differently. Both scholars were identified as instigators of the Tian’anmen Incident, and both were driven into exile because of the severe crackdown.

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Liu was forty-eight years old when he fled China in the summer of 1989. Since his arrival in Beijing in 1963, he had striven arduously for twenty-six years, turning himself from an editor into one of the most influential cultural and literary leaders of China. As a seasoned “insider,” he was capable of steer- ing between the Scylla and Charybdis of Party politics and intellectual rivalries while advancing his own career, and yet he took a most audacious turn dur- ing and after the Tian’anmen Incident. His own intellectual judgment aside, he made his move because his upbringing had taught him to common sense more than ideology and integrity more than power games. He asked: How could a nation built on revolutionary become a cannibalistic machine, using “revolution” as the pretext to facilitate oppressions, move- ments, and purges? How could someone love China, only to be exiled and forced to give up his nationality? The famous line in Lao She’s 老舍 (1899–1966) play Tea House (Chaguan 茶館, 1958) is particularly resonant here: “I love my country; but who loves me?” Once hailed as the “people’s artist,” Lao She was so persecuted by the Red Guards that he committed suicide at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Do we still need revolution at the end of the modern century? Together with Li, Liu published Farewell to Revolution in 1994. In the eyes of many left- ists, this is a blasphemous book, because “revolution” has been sanctioned as the raison d’être of the People’s Republic. Liu contends nevertheless that, insofar as it is associated with the “sublime figure,” primitive passions, moral superiority, a political “state of exception,” mass violence, and the Machiavellian of the ends justifying the means, revolution cannot and should not be “naturalized” as a warrant for the sovereignty of a nation/state. With its inherent radical momentum, revolution is supposed to thrive on its subversive power vis-à-vis any establishment. This is exactly the paradox that Liu finds in the Chinese communist regime, which eternalizes the “state of exception” by calling for continued revolution. Meanwhile, Liu consid- ers that when expatriate dissidents seek to oppose the Chinese government with radical measures, they replicate the same revolutionary logic, uncan- nily solidifying the regime they mean to overthrow. The more challenging question to ask, however, is: What is the alternative, if revolution has been depreciated as a dated political operation? It is not surprising, perhaps, that with Farewell to Revolution, Liu and Li were bombarded with criticisms from the leftists of both the old and the new types. Liu and Li have been described as sellouts to Western liberal , elite individualists “depoliticizing” politics, and more vehemently as conspira- tors for “enlightenment restoration.” To these charges, Liu and Li may have felt more ironic than disturbed: insofar as they both were protégés of the Party

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access xii foreword in their younger days, they were only too familiar with the rhetoric, tactics, and sentiment shared by the latest crop of detractors. By bidding farewell to revolution, nevertheless, they do not mean to do away with its historical legacy and political thrust; rather, they mean to critique the way revolution has been fetishized as “political ” by the privileged and the powerful, such that it even generates its own antithesis in terms of hegemony and totalitarianism. Above all, Liu and Li derive their critical stance from none other than Lu Xun, who set out to critique as early as 1927: “revolution, revolutionize revolution, revolutionize revolutionized revolution, revolutionize revolutionized revolu- tionized….”2 Most intriguingly, at a time when “stability maintenance” (weiwen 維穩) and “harmonious society” (hexie shehui 和諧社會) have become catch- phrases of the government, shouldn’t the communist regime itself be accused of the genuine force bidding farewell to revolution?

2 Exile the Gods

After bidding farewell to revolution, Liu Zaifu launched the next task: exiling the gods. This recalls ’s famous definition of European modernity as a project of disenchantment from the gods of the past in favor of , efficacy, and . Nevertheless, Weber was always wary that in mod- ern times: “many old gods ascend from their graves; they are disenchanted and hence take the form of impersonal forces.”3 Who are the “gods” still haunting postrevolutionary China? For Liu, the gods are not deified fixations from nowhere but one’s inner self, regardless of attributes of leftism or rightism, or avant-gardism. Liu sug- gests that we need to exorcise the following “five types of gods”: the gods of nationalism, revolution, abstract , self-centeredness, and bipolar thinking. As will be discussed below, Liu’s provocation aims not so much at denouncing any beliefs, religious or otherwise, and thus falling into the pitfall of as at challenging any attempts to idolize, dogmatize, and “mytholo- gize” modern thought and doctrines; in other words, he seeks to point out the enchanting powers looming in the modernist projects that arose in the name

2 Lu Xun, “Xiao zagan 小雜感 [Little Random Thoughts],” in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 [Complete Works of Lu Xun] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1956), 3:396–99. 3 Max Weber, “The Disenchantment of Modern Life,” in his From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 132.

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access foreword xiii of disenchantment. Such an enchantment is called reification by Karl Marx (1818–83), and alienation by György Lukács (1885–1971). Having been through the ups and downs of numerous campaigns and movements of socialist China, Liu is keenly aware of the creative power gener- ated by revolution and equally leery of the utopian calling and mandate arising therefrom. At the same time, he is reluctant to endorse collective subjectiv- ity, be it called nationalism, proletarian solidarity, or the Party line, at the cost of individual variations. He has eagerly supported a lineup of noble-sounding concepts, discourses, and slogans, only to realize at one point that despite its premise: “each is a setup, a kind of bondage. Haven’t concepts such as ‘class struggle,’ ‘basic total hegemony,’ and ‘continued revolution’ all proven to be a trap, a shackle?” Most notable is the fact that the deities on Liu’s list to expel include selfhood and bipolar thinking. Liu was known as a trumpeter of individualized subjec- tivity during the 1980s. Nevertheless, although he spares no effort critiquing total self-erasure and unconditional for the people, paramount of Maoism, he remains vigilant against the egoistic undercurrents of subjec- tivism. For him, when pushed to the extreme, individual subjectivity induces and self-interestedness, such that it merely represents the other end of the bipolar swing of conventional Maoist dialectic. This is why instead of subjectivity, Liu has promoted intersubjectivity and the composition of mul- tiple subjectivities. From either extreme, Liu’s theory is deemed heretic in a system entrenched in the mythology of (proletarian) collectivity. For all his skepticism about the “gods” in the socialist society, Liu is not an atheist. Indeed, his writing in recent years has shown increasing attention to the transcendental aspect of humanity. Scholars have pointed out the differ- ence between Liu’s and Li’s definitions of divinity and the other world. Li’s philosophy is engaged with this-worldly concerns. Folding Kantian enlighten- ment, Marxian , and the Confucian concept of benevolence into a unique theory of his own, Li upholds the of feeling ( benti 情 本體) and an optimistic worldview (legan 樂感) as that which substantiates Chinese civilization. By contrast, Liu appears more curious about the world beyond the human domain, and more willing to contemplate the possibil- ity of the divine: “from a scientific viewpoint, does not exist … but we can still say God exists insofar as one treats God as a mentality, a feeling.”4

4 See Gu Dayong 古大勇, “Zhong-Xi ‘daguan’ shiye xia de wenxue piping he wenhua pipan— Liu Zaifu xiansheng fangtanlu 中西「大觀」視野下的文學批評和文化批判—劉再復先 生訪談錄 [Literary Criticism and Cultural Critique in a Grand Chinese-Western Perspective: An Interview with Mr. Liu Zaifu],” Gansu shehui kexue 甘肅社會科學 [Gansu Social

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In other words, whereas Li adheres to enlightenment and rationality, Liu is eager to explore the unknown horizon, a space where the divine and the demonic interact. He may not have a in , but he remains keen on the religious sensibilities emanating from the human world. Such an inclination led Liu to a series of works on “interrogating the ” (kaowen linghun 拷問靈魂), in his words. He contends that for various reasons, Chinese civilization lacks a deep recognition of sin and “confessional aware- ness,” both integral to Western religious culture. This observation, however, is not without a paradoxical undertone, for the Chinese communist discourse since the Yan’an days has been rife with references to sin and confession, dis- cipline and punishment. Mao kicked off the “rectification movement” in 1943 by declaring it would “punish those who made mistakes before so as to caution the latecomers; cure the ill so as to save more lives.” The genealogy of Chinese communist discourse includes a full-fledged system of ideological criminology and purgatorial symbolism. This is exactly where Liu takes issue with the Party. “Sin” as he understands it refers not so much to legal transgression or religious downfall as to the inborn insufficiency of humanity: humans are made of imper- fections and therefore destined to navigate temptations and degeneration in pursuit of existential plenitude. Liu’s ethical ontology5 is derived as much from the Christian notion of original sin as from the Heideggerian rumination on the finitude of the human vis-à-vis the enshrouding openness of time and . Equally important is his indebtedness to the 王陽 明 school of Confucianism, especially the “leftist vein” that stresses the exer- cise of self-reflection to the point of self-flagellation. As Liu contends, communist moral logic is predicated on the Manichean scheme of versus evil as well as the vengeful mechanism of inspection and purge; however, the same logic points to the hagiographical potential of every man: if “properly cultivated,” “six hundred million Chinese people will all become sages like Shun and Yao” (liuyi Shenzhou jin Shun Yao 六億神州盡 舜堯), as Mao’s lyrical line goes. In contrast, Liu has drawn a more ambiguous picture of socialist humanity. He argues about the prolonged, intertwined rela- tionship between virtue and evil and the “spiritual wounds” that humans must bear. Above all, he calls out the sin of complicity that all citizens of the Maoist regime consciously and unconsciously share, in that sense, not unlike Hannah

Sciences], 1 (2015): 95; Tu Hang 涂航, “Le yu zui: Li Zehou Liu Zaifu yu wenhua fansi de liang zhong lujing 與罪：李澤厚劉再復與文化反思的兩種路徑 [Pleasure and Sin: Li Zehou, Liu Zaifu, and the Two Routes of Cultural Reflection in post-Mao China],” Huawen wenxue 華文文學 [Literatures in Chinese], 2 (2019): 22–31. 5 Tu, “Le yu zui,” 27.

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Arendt’s pondering the “mediocrity of evil” during the Nazi era.6 Thus, beyond the exercise of crime and punishment, he highlights the need for confession: not just admitting one’s wrongs in legal or moral terms but acknowledging the inherent complexities and ambiguities of human nature. “Confession is in effect in self-trial.” “If I were to set up hell, I would first put myself there.” Therefore, Five Autobiographical Accounts ends with the volume My History of Mistakes (Wo de cuowu shi 我的錯誤史). For Liu, the most intimate venue in which confessions take place is neither church nor the public rally to “reeducate” and shame people, but literature. He has recommended the dream sequence of The Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s (1821–81) Brothers Karamazov and the mythical motif of Stone’s “reciprocating tears with tears” in Cao Xueqin’s The Dream of the Red Chamber as two of the greatest examples endowed with either metaphysical subtlety or mythological magnitude. Liu further suggests that confession is nothing if not premised on compassion and love. Accordingly, whereas “confession expresses the subject’s internalized moral responsibility through self-condemnation, love expresses the subject’s moral responsibility for others through self-dedication. Confession and love are two sides of the same coin of conscience.” Liu’s concept of confession and love is bound to draw criticism in a culture couched in the Nietzschean/Lu Xunesque logic of revenge and Mao Zedong’s 毛澤東 (1893–1976) doctrine of continual revolution. It also needs to be enriched with a more nuanced theoretical framework, for a critic can easily retort that communist hagiography is never short of cases of confession and love.7 Still, I call attention to the thin line Liu tries to draw between his concept of confession and love and its communist counterpart. As he cautions, any slippage over the line will make confession a pretext for coercive subjugation and turn love into sentimentalism and even fanaticism. As Liu would have it, the return of Weberian “gods” in the new millennium marks one of the most bizarre phenomena of postsocialist China. As if try- ing to fill the intellectual vacuum left open since the Tian’anmen Incident, scholars have tried to introduce various “deities” for and emulation: to name just a few, Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927), Leo Strauss (1899–1973), Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), Frederick Hayek (1899–1992), and of course Mao Zedong. In the name of these “gods,” competing discourses surged up, ranging from to Neo-Confucianism, from New Leftism to Maoism.

6 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking, 1963). 7 For instance, Alain Badiou, “What Is Love?” trans. J. Clemens, in Jacques Lacan, ed. Slavoj Žižek (New York: Routledge, 2003), 4:53–54, 59.

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Jiang Qing 蔣慶 (1953–), a Neo-Confucianist by training, invoked the Gongyang 公羊 School of Confucian and called for the reinstatement of the king; Liu Xiaofeng 劉小楓 (1956–), a renowned scholar and dedicated Christian in the 1980s, came to enshrine Mao Zedong as national father. When Zhao Tingyang 趙汀陽 (1961–), best known for his theory of “all under heaven” (tianxia 天下), claimed to “make the political of ‘China’ as such,” he was conjuring the ghost of Carl Schmitt, who inaugurated the theory of politi- cal theology in the 1930s and brought it to bear on Hitler’s Nazi regime. Weber’s premonition one century ago that “many old gods ascend from their graves” could not sound more poignant in postsocialist China.8 At this juncture, Liu’s provocation to expel the gods becomes all the more significant. Compared with scholars who enthusiastically promote their gods, Liu may come across as timid and conservative. But given his , he understands only too well the enchanting power of those gods ascending from their graves, and he strives to find an alternative. He turns to the classical con- cept of xin 心 or heart-mind, from which he hopes to create what he calls “the third space” (di san kongjian 第三空間).

3 The Space of Literary Heart-Mind

The new millennium has seen China entering an era of unprecedented strength and prosperity. The rise of China on the world stage has not, however, been accompanied by a loosening of thought control. It is no exaggeration to say that Xi Jinping’s 習近平 (1953–) regime has taken a great leap backward when it comes to and intellectual autonomy. In view of the increasing measures of and crackdown, Liu indicates that to “remain independent, an intellectual has to create his own space of speech and thinking, namely ‘the third space.’” This space “has to grant one total inde- pendence and autonomy; otherwise, freedom will be an empty promise.” Liu’s suggestion evokes the famous elegiac lines composed by Chen Yinke 陳寅恪 (1890–1969) in commemoration of Wang Guowei 王國維 (1877–1927), who drowned himself in 1927: “independence of spirit, freedom of thought” (duli jingshen, ziyou zhi sixiang 獨立之精神，自由之思想). For Liu, “freedom is not a concept, a thesis, or a definition,” nor does he consider freedom an expression of “,” as a Kantian scholar would have

8 Zhao Tingyang, Hui ci Zhongguo: Zuowei ge shenxing gainian de Zhongguo 惠此中國： 作為一個神性概念的中國 [Favor This China: China as a Theological Concept] (Beijing: Zhongxin chubanshe, 2016), 17.

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access foreword xvii it; instead, “freedom is an ‘awakening,’ a determination to guard independent thought and right under the most stringent circumstances, so as to enable the least restricted creation of spiritual value.” This is where the “third space” exists. In contrast with “the first space” of mainland China and “the second space” of the world of expatriates, “the third space” is a virtual world of sorts that takes shape in multiple conditions and forms. Liu seems to have derived such a vision from the Kantian aesthetic autonomy of disinterestedness, but a closer look reveals more of his dialogue with traditional Chinese thought. Over the past twenty years, he has turned more and more vigorously to Chinese intellectual classics, finding wisdom in not only the Daoist teachings, such as “return to the infant heart,” but also ’s self-erasure and nothingness. Still, it is the school of the heart-mind or xinxue 心學 of Confucianism, as represented by Lu Jiuyuan 陸九淵 (1139–93) of the Song dynasty and Wang Yangming of the Ming, that best illuminates his intellectual lineage. Lu Jiuyuan’s words, “the universe is my heart-mind; my heart-mind is the universe (yuzhou ji wu xin, wu xin ji yuzhou 宇宙即吾心，吾心即宇宙)” underline Liu’s description of “the third space” at its most cogent. Liu’s critics may quickly point out that his discourse of freedom has exposed his idealist inclination in toto, and he has completely betrayed communist , which is based on . But as Liu would have it, such a charge reveals nothing but the rigid bipolar thinking that still dominates these critics. Whether Liu is a subjectivist or even an idealist can be subject to debate. What truly interests us is the fact that by invoking the necessity of “heart-mind” with regard to postsocialist , Liu has recapitulated the long modern tradition of the “heart-mind” despite the advancement of on the one hand and communist materialism on the other. The heart-mind scholarship resurged in the late Qing era. Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 (1865–98), for instance, invoked “heart-mind force” (xinli 心力) as that which energized intellectuals and the people at large to engage in reform. More famously, Lu Xun yearned for a restoration of the “pure heart” (baixin 白心) of the Chinese people and promoted Mara Poetry—poetry endowed with Satanic power—as a way to “pluck their heart” (ying xin 攖其心). It is no surprise that the modern Neo-Confucianists have lobbied for retrieving the stray heart; hence Hsu Fu-kuan’s 徐復觀 (1904–82) statement that “the fundamental char- acteristic of Chinese culture is a culture of the heart-mind.”9

9 Hsu Fu-kuan, “Xin de wenhua 心的文化 [The Culture of the Heart-mind],” in Xu Fuguan wenxji 徐復觀文集 [Collected Essays of Xu Fuguan], ed. Li Weiwu 李維武 (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2002), 1:31.

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access xviii foreword

What is surprising is that Chinese communist discourse, despite all its materialist claims, has been deeply entrenched in the “heart-mind” philoso- phy. Scholars have identified the imprints of the Confucian heart in Mao Zedong’s early thought.10 In the Yan’an era, the Mencian impact can be dis- cerned in both Liu Shaoqi’s instructions on Party members’ self-cultivation and Mao’s archnemesis Hu Feng’s 胡風 (1902–85) campaign for the “subjective spirit of battle” (zhuguan zhandou jingshen 主觀戰鬥精神). The Anti-Rightist Campaign culminated in the demand of “submitting one’s heart to the Party” (xiang dang jiao xin 向黨交心) in 1958. As late as 2017, Xi Jinping decreed that Party members should not forget the “original heart” (chuxin 初心) so as to hold on to their revolutionary mission. Liu’s engagement with “heart-mind” studies can be traced back to the mid- 1980s. When assisting Zhou Yang in redefining Marx’s early notion about alien- ation and subjectivity, he was already contemplating the terms of subjectivity vis-à-vis the materialistic world. He has said to 胡錦濤 (1942–), who later became the national leader: “Nurtured in the system of socialist public ownership, I do not oppose economic nationalization, but I am against nation- alization of the heart. Campaigns such as ‘lay one’s heart bare’ and ‘fight indi- vidualism, repudiate revisionism’ are all measures for nationalizing the heart. Once nationalized, the heart will lose its individual characteristics and there- fore cannot create anything of spiritual worth.” After years of self-exile, he finally came to the understanding:

It is where one’s heart is, not where one’s body is, that matters more…. If we take the concept of “solidifying one’s destiny” (li ming 立命), I would say it is based first on “solidifying the heart” (li xin 立心). Lu Xun once said the prerequisite for “solidifying the nation” (li guo 立國) is “solidify- ing the human” (li 立人). Following this logic, I contend that “solidify- ing one’s destiny” presupposes “solidifying one’s heart.” I harbor no vanity to “solidify the heart for the universe,” but I have the self-awareness to “solidify my own heart.”

In light of the subtle linkage between the heart-mind and the experience of epiphany and imagination, Liu emphasizes literature as the key entryway to

10 Qi Zhixiang 祁志祥, Zhongguo xiandangdai renxue shi: Sixiang yanbian de shidai tezheng ji qi lishi guiji 中國現當代人學史：思想演變的時代特徵及其歷史軌跡 [Modern and Contemporary History of the Chinese Human: Epochal Traits and Historical Traces of Intellectual Changes] (Taipei: Duli zuojia chubanshe, 2016), 153–79.

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access foreword xix the heart-mind. For him, literature generates the power of not only fabrica- tion but also “fabulation,” such that it transgresses boundaries and breaks open new horizons beyond the reach of this-worldly rationality and sensibility. Literature is that which represents the unrepresentable, and as such it lends form, however suggestive, to the yearning for freedom. As far as the multiple forms of the heart-mind are concerned, Liu has asked himself to relinquish the “heart of brutality” of the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水滸傳) and the “heart of intrigue and cynicism” of the Romance of Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi 三國演義), and instead pursue the “heart of salvation” of the Journey to the West (Xi you ji 西遊記) and the “heart of mercy and compassion” of The Dream of the Red Chamber. More provocatively, he argues for replacing the traditional canon with the classics with literary bearings: The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shan hai 山海經), , , The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經), The Diamond Sutra (Jin’gang jing 金剛經, Vajracchedikā Sūtra), and The Dream of the Red Chamber, the “literary bible.” The two literary writers Liu admires most are Cao Xueqin and Gao Xingjian 高行健 (1940–). Whereas Cao creates one of the most intricate alle- gorical novels in world literature, interrogating the perennial question of illu- sion versus awakening, fiction versus reality, Gao faces up to the postrevolution wasteland and embarks on a desolate journey in search of spiritual salvation. Both take issue with realism and reality in humanistic and transcendental senses, and both seek in literature a way to further elucidate the relationship between the heart-mind and the world. As Liu points out, both writers set out to write in the midst of personal and historical crises. Despite their different subject matters, they instantiate litera- ture as an expression of compassion and freedom. Their works refuse to give an easy answer to questions about the changeability of the human condition, the of this world and beyond, and the folly of humankind in pursuit of attachments. No longer would Liu follow Lu Xun, the writer he otherwise deeply respects, who starts his literary agenda with a “call to arms” and ends with “wandering” in the labyrinthian “stratagem of nothingness.” Nor would Liu endorse the master’s logic of revenge and revolution, which he consid- ers amounts to a cyclical chain of violence. Literature, to be sure, is not the panacea for China’s problems. Quite the contrary: literature manifests itself by exposing not only the complexity of the world but also its own vulnerability in the face of the violence in the world and beyond. But this is exactly where Liu places his claim for literature as an exercise of freedom and compassion. Compassion derives from the “reverence and fear” called forth by literary representations of the unrepresentable, and freedom becomes accountable

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access xx foreword only when literature delineates our limitations and finitude. In Gao Xingjian’s words, “the of freedom comes before the choice of freedom…. Freedom is nothing but one’s confrontation with one’s existence.”11 Liu defines the “literary heart-mind” as that which arises from the dialogue between compassion and freedom. If compassion means all-embracing accep- tance of the other, freedom means total autonomy regardless of external inter- ference. If the former stresses the virtues of forgiveness and self-sacrifice, the later stresses those of integrity and self-sufficiency. The two complement as much as undercut each other’s priorities and goals. Literature becomes what it is by dramatizing the dialectic at its most compelling and uncompromising. In contemporary China and the Sinophone world, few match Liu’s fervor for literature. For decades, he has arduously explored “the third space” by gaug- ing the latitude of “the literary heart-mind.” Liu writes with such lyricism and exuberance that he almost presents like a poet with a perennially passionate heart—a “pure heart.” Perhaps his own words sum it up best. Looking back, he concludes that his career and life can be analogized to “standing alone atop the mountain, walking freely under the sea” (shanding duli, haidi zixing 山頂獨 立，海底自行). As Liu said, “I have to keep giving my declaration of indepen- dence. This is my personal secret.” A literary critic and a citizen of the world, Liu embodies these lines:

Rivers flow to the sea, and where does the sea flow? The sea flows into the eyes of an exile.

江河流向大海，大海流向哪裡？ 大海流向漂泊者的眼睛。

11 Gao Xingjian, Ziyou yu wenxue 自由與文學 [Freedom and Literature] (Taipei: Linking Publications, 2014), 53.

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access Acknowledgments

This book project was initiated at the University of Colorado at Boulder by Howard Goldblatt 葛浩文, to whom we owe a debt that cannot be adequately expressed in words. The editors are grateful to the following translators around the world, whose hard work made this collection of Liu Zaifu’s 劉再復 essays possible: Nicole Elizabeth Barnes, Alan Berkowitz 柏士隱 (1950–2015), Eileen J. Cheng 莊愛玲, Howard Y. F. Choy 蔡元豐, Steven Day, Ann Huss 何素 楠, Sabina Knight 桑稟華, Ke Wei, Haili Kong 孔海立, Torbjörn Lodén 羅多 弼, Lianying Shan 單連瑩, Yunzhong Shu 舒允中, and Jessica Yeung 楊慧儀. Their brief biographies can be found in the postscript to the present volume. David Der-wei Wang 王德威, Edward C. Henderson Professor in Chinese Literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, kindly wrote the preface “Standing Alone atop the Mountain; Walking Freely under the Sea.” The Brill team and Leslie Kriesel have been indispensable throughout the edi- torial process. The editors are also pleased to acknowledge Zhu Xiuwen 祝修 文 and Qiao Min 喬敏 of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for finishing the bibliography and index of the manuscript.

Howard Y. F. Choy Jianmei Liu

Zaifu Liu - 9789004449121 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:25:49AM via free access